


in a heavy single step

by thefigureinthecorner



Series: college blues (and yellows and greens) [2]
Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Caleb/Adam is mentioned but isn't a focus, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Suicidal Thoughts, because finals week also sucks when you have ADHD, but sometimes it results in friends, finals week sucks when you're an empath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:19:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22048510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefigureinthecorner/pseuds/thefigureinthecorner
Summary: “Caleb? You good?”“I’m--”No. Nope, something’s wrong. The black sludge just keeps building and building up and it’s clogging his lungs andsomething’s wrong.Or: wherein finals week is terrible for the health of empaths, someone down the hall really needs help, and Alice does her best.
Series: college blues (and yellows and greens) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1597228
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	in a heavy single step

It’s finals week.

It’s finals week, and Caleb hasn’t been able to breathe right in days.

There’s stress. Constantly. Black sludge, orange fear, red anger and frustration, deep,  _ deep  _ exhaustion, and stress stress  _ stress _ . Everywhere, from all sides, at all hours of the day. No matter how late he stays up or how early he wakes up to try and get away from it, someone else beats him to it; other students pulling all-nighters, coffee-induced jitters, and just-- fucking  _ stress. _

He ends up getting no sleep and it only makes it worse. The exhaustion is making it harder to regulate even his own emotions, much less the onslaught from everyone else, and it’s almost painful at this point. Nothing settles right in his chest. Nothing helps.

He thinks, not for the first time, that Adam would help. But Adam’s dealing with his own finals week right now and his program is much more rigorous than Caleb’s and the absolute last thing on earth that Caleb wants is to give his stress to Adam. That doesn’t help either of them. And he knows Adam’s already stressed, because it’s mostly been radio silence on his end, and that means he’s trying to focus. Caleb’s stopped trying to contact him, with the last message he sent being simply: “hey i know you’re stressed, just like, tell me when it’s a better time to talk. good luck on finals, love you.”

That was three days ago.

He’s gotten… maybe five hours of sleep in those three days.

He tries, tries to apply what Dr. Bright taught him while he was still in therapy with her-- the mindfulness, the breathing, the whole picture-a-leaf meditation thing she had him do, but it’s not working.

Distracting himself isn’t working either, because if he tries to focus on something else, he just feels restless. He’s not focusing on what he should, he’s relaxing too much, he needs to get off Instagram or Twitter or whatever, put his DS away, stop going on runs, he doesn’t have the time for any of this, he needs to  _ study. _

He doesn’t, actually. He’s feeling pretty confident in his own finals, for the first time in a very long time; he’d been trying to study throughout the semester instead of cramming because after how midterms went, he’d thought this might happen and, well.

He was right.

So now he’s pacing around his dorm, close to crying from the stress, glad his roommate’s out somewhere and not able to see him like this. He wants to move, wants to run, but more than that he wants to dive into bed and hide under the covers and never look anyone in the eyes ever again, because at least in his dorm there’s less concern over proximity to other people.

He could  _ call  _ Dr. Bright. It might be easier to do the meditation exercises or what-the-fuck-ever if he calls her and talks through everything. She’d told her, as she was closing her office, and again at graduation, that he should call whenever if he needed her. New experiences in college, and all.

But-- no. He’d heard that something really, really bad had happened at the AM. Nobody would give him  _ all  _ the details, but the last time he saw Dr. Bright, one weekend when he dropped Alice off at the AM because both their parents were busy, it had felt-- not good. Really, really fucking terrible, actually.

Wait.

Alice.

She’s not Adam, and she’s probably not gonna be happy about him calling about this at-- he checks the time-- 10pm. Huh, okay, not that late then, but Alice tends to go to sleep pretty early.

Ah, well.

He’ll take his chances.

“Caleb? I was about to go to sleep, you’re lucky you didn’t wake me up. I’m stronger than you and you know it.”

Caleb rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, you have a superpower, that doesn’t count.”

“It does, because I can lift a minivan over my head, and you can’t.”

He blows a raspberry into the phone and she laughs out an indignant “ew!” and it’s like he’s been home this whole time and they were never apart.

And, strangely enough, this helps. This, by itself. Just talking. Talking to Alice. The knot in his chest that’s been suffocating him the past few days loosens the tiniest bit at the familiar banter, and he relaxes just marginally, and that-- whoops. That makes him start  _ actually  _ crying, not just fighting the frustrated tears back but just full-on sobbing in earnest now, and he sits down on his mattress and hunches over and straps in because there’s no stopping this and there’s no way on earth Alice didn’t hear that.

“...Caleb? Holy shit, are you crying?”

He sniffles. It sounds gross. He can imagine Alice making a disgusted face at the noise.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, sorry, I just. Uh. Stress.”

She sucks in a breath through her teeth. “Ooooh, finals. Right. Dorms.”

“Yeah. Y’know how I was around midterms? This is like ten times worse. Didn’t wanna call Adam cause he’s dealing with his own shit right now, so.”

“Hmmmmmmm.” She sounds contemplative. “Maybe you should come home for a day this weekend? Being home might help. Like, I know you’ve said our emotions are easier to handle.”

Caleb huffs a wet laugh. “Yeah, driving back home while I’ve got so much stress shoved into me that I want to hide in the fucking forest, far, far away from humanity, and never leave sounds like a  _ great  _ plan.”

“Oof.”

“Yup.”

“...Don’t die.”

“I’ll try.”

He doesn’t sound convincing. He knows he doesn’t. He blames the tears and the black sludge. Clearly, Alice picks up on the not-at-all-convincing-ness of it all, though, because she actually, genuinely sounds concerned and way more alert than she did seconds ago.

_ “ Caleb.” _

“No, seriously, I won’t. Don’t worry. It’s fine. I’ll be fine. It’s just another week and then I’ll be home for winter break, I just. Don’t know how I’m gonna sit through that week. At least tests are a little easier, people are more focused than in high school because for the most part people are majoring in what they care about. No, like, universally hated math classes or whatever.”

“Yeah, makes sense.”

“Yeah. It’s just-- the cramming. Everyone’s studying. I’ve been getting like two hours of sleep a night because no matter what,  _ someone’s  _ always pulling an all-nighter and even just one person cramming is too much stress to sleep for very long. And it wouldn’t be fixed by me getting a single either.”

“Yiiiiiiikes.”

They’re both silent. Talking has helped Caleb re-compose himself so he’s not fully sobbing anymore, but he can still feel the tears on his face and he’s still sniffly and he still feels terrible. Crying didn’t get the emotions out like it’s supposed to.

They’re just stuck. They’re stuck in his chest and he can’t get them out. Spiraling and swirling around like a whirlpool that’s gonna suck him in and drown him, and it’s not like Adam at all, where the ocean is calm and pleasant and he feels like he might actually be okay with drowning. He feels like he’s fighting tooth and nail to stay up and the stormy waves keep dragging him under. He sighs, hoping it’ll get some of the weight off.

It doesn’t.

“I… guess I might be able to see Adam sometime during the finals week itself. I mean, Yale gets out like a week earlier than we do, so.”

Black sludge.

His chest feels tight again.

“Well, that’ll be good, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, uh. It will.”

_ Black sludge. _

“Caleb? You good?”

“I’m--”

No. Nope, something’s wrong. The black sludge just keeps building and building up and it’s clogging his lungs and  _ something’s wrong. _

“...Are you still there?”

Something’s wrong  _ with  _ someone.

Fuck.

_ Fuck. _

“I gotta go,” he says in a rush, and he hangs up the call and sprints towards the source of the sludge. He doesn’t want to be closer to it,  _ absolutely does not  _ want to be closer to it, but it won’t go away and he has a sinking feeling deep in his stomach that he knows what it is and why it’s happening and he needs to  _ help.  _ He’d never forgive himself if someone-- if something happened and he knew and didn’t try. That’s what he’s  _ here  _ for and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t use his ability the way he said he would, the way he wanted to, to help instead of just keep hurting and hurting like he almost always seems to do--

The black sludge swirls in his thoughts like a whirlpool and he picks up the pace.

It’s strongest down the hall-- not on a different floor, thank fuck, he’s able to get there quickly, and he knocks on the door and immediately realizes how dumb this plan is because like-- what the fuck is he supposed to say, here? That from down the hall he felt like this person might kill themselves or something, no, no, he’s completely normal, that’s a totally normal-person hunch to have, nothing atypical to see here, don’t call the police or the evil government scientists?

The doorknob turns.

Fuck.

His phone’s buzzing in his pocket and he’s pretty sure it’s Alice and man, this is just. Jesus fuck he does not think things through. Like, ever.

The kid who opens the door is about his age, he thinks-- same year, not older. Maybe younger by a bit. Like, a few months. Short. Thick-frame glasses. Wearing a hoodie and sweatpants. And honestly, she looks like an absolute wreck, every bit the black sludge that slams into Caleb’s chest as the door opens.

“Uh. Hi. Can I… help you?”

Caleb flounders, trying to speak around the feeling suffocating him. “Um. Uh. I just-- uh--”

The kid stares at him, clearly looking like she’d rather be doing anything but talking to him, looking like she has no patience for the tall-ass weirdo darkening her doorway, and he wants to hit himself.  _ C’mon, Great Amazing Feelings Boy. Think of an excuse. _

“Uh, I just, is your roommate here? I, uh, asked for some notes in class, this is the room number    
I was given.” He has no fucking clue who this kid’s roommate is and he’s probably just dug the hole deeper for himself because there’s only so far he can go while avoiding names here.

“She’s, um. Not.” She sounds tired. “I’ll-- tell her you stopped by. If that’s it, then I’m just gonna-- I have. Finals. To study for, so. Kinda busy.”

The door starts to close and Caleb feels some alarm build in his chest-- his own, this time, he thinks. Maybe. Hopefully.

_ “ _W_ ait,  _ wait-- are you uh. You good?”

She rolls her eyes like she's tired of being asked and the pit in Caleb’s stomach becomes a chasm. He asked the wrong thing. Dammit.

“Yeah. I’m fine. It’s, just, y’know, finals week, I’m tired. I’m gonna go study. Or, try to.”

His bullshit buzzer is going off a bit, but he can’t insist without being weird, so he just nods and feels kind of hopeless and terrible and like he knows what’s going to happen, like he can’t stop it, like there’s no time to stop it.

The kid starts to close the door in his face before pausing and squinting at him weirdly. He looks behind him, like maybe there’s something else, but-- nope. Just him. He squirms, kind of uncomfortable at the worry that worms up through the sludge. Directed-- towards him? Oh, god, is he acting suspicious? He’s probably acting suspicious. He’s gonna be kidnapped for being an exposure risk or what-the-fuck-ever any second now.

“Uh…”

“...Are.  _ You  _ okay?” She asks the question hesitantly, cocking her head a bit.

And, well. Yeah. Okay. Fair question. He probably looks like he just cried for like 20 minutes and then ran here. Which is in fact exactly what happened.

“Yeah-- yeah, just. Also tired.”

The kid-- wait, he really shouldn’t be calling her a kid, actually, if they’re the same age, should he? Like,  _ he’s  _ definitely not a kid, that’s probably rude, and, come on Caleb, that is literally not the point right now, but also yeah, don’t call her a kid-- she opens the door a bit wider and gesture inside with her head.

“I’m Lou. I think we’re both kinda screwed up right now.”

He laughs a bit at that and puts his phone on do not disturb, shooting Alice a quick text so she’ll stop worrying-- “I’m fine, just felt some emotions that needed help.”

Lou’s room is one of the twin bed setups-- two floor beds, two desks, slightly larger room to accommodate the extra space that not having loft beds takes up. She sits down on the floor, leaning against-- presumably-- her bed, and Caleb sits on the floor across from her, leaning up against what he assumes is her roommate’s bed.

She runs her hand through her hair and given how the short, choppy, slightly-grown-out pixie cut she has is sticking up every which way, he gets the feeling she does that a lot. It looks kinda like she got electrocuted, with how wild it is. Like she got really unlucky with a very staticky balloon, or something, and she never got it to lie flat again.

“So. What’s up.” Caleb didn’t actually expect to get this far and he has… absolutely no clue how to approach the subject. Like, fun fact, I can feel emotions. Yours suck. Vent to me.

Yeah, no thanks.

“Uh, y’know. Finals.” She makes a vague gesture with her hand and then starts talking like she hasn’t said a single word in months and wants it all out. “Like, okay, I’m  _ trying  _ to study, and I thought being in college studying the thing I liked with other people who like the thing I like would help me focus better, and it’d help me make friends because they’re just as passionate, but like, it didn’t, you know? I still can’t focus because no matter how cool the stuff we’re learning is, I still wanna focus on my own personal projects-- like, okay, I have ADHD, right, so I just can’t focus. Or, I can, but not on the things I  _ need  _ to, not the things everyone else wants me to.

“So I’m like, sitting here, trying to study, and I can’t, and I don’t really know how because I’ve never felt like I needed to before anyway, but now we’re learning things I don’t know and I just do not know how to study because I never  _ actually  _ learned, and also I can never retain any of it, because if I try to listen for more than a minute or read and reread my notes I kinda just shut down and start thinking about what I’m gonna do with my project-- it’s this, like, clean-energy thing I’m working on, I’m majoring in electrical engineering-- anyway.

So like, I can’t focus, even though I really want to because I care about the material, I wanna pass my classes, I wanna pay attention in class, but it just doesn’t _work._ And I _wanted_ to try and go on meds for it or whatever, because it feels absolutely impossible to manage without at least trying, but like, my therapist says that’s a “ _bad_ _idea”_ because it apparently could, like, kill me or something because I’m atypical, and--”

She finally cuts off and slaps a hand over her mouth, looking terrified, like she’s just said something she shouldn’t have, and she’s been talking so fast and bouncing from feeling to feeling so much that Caleb hasn’t caught much of any of that, but--

But he knows what she  _ just  _ said. Those last few words.

The shock and confusion must show on his face because now she’s scrambling to cover up, panic rising, and waving her arms like that’ll clear the words from the air. “I just meant-- I-- Shit, I’m not supposed to--”

He puts his hands up placatingly and hopes he looks non-threatening. “No, no, wait, chill, I just-- you said you’re atypical?”

She stops. “Um. Yes. Yes, I did.”

“Me too.”

And her eyes light up. He barely feels the black sludge at all anymore because he’s just been sucker-punched in the gut with joy and relief and this like, bright-ass fucking warm peachy color that he’s grown to associate with happiness, but specifically over finding someone to relate to. It’s a specific type of happy that he’s learned to recognize well.

_ “ _You are?!”_ _ She looks like she’s buzzing with excitement and-- wait. No. She’s…  _ literally buzzing  _ with excitement. The lights have gone a little weird and her hair is standing on end even more. She’s kind of bouncing in place a bit and she is  _ beaming. _

“Uh, yeah.” Caleb rubs the back of his neck and head, running his hands through where his convenient-for-a-football-helmet buzz cut’s grown out since graduation-- he’s still getting used to that. Feels kinda weird. “I’m an empath. I’m… assuming you do some stuff with electricity,” he says, gesturing lightly to the-- well, lights.

She nods vigorously. “I didn’t think I’d ever meet anyone like me, my therapist was like, suuuuper secretive about other atypicals, like she’d barely even give me general information, which kinda sucks, y’know, not having anyone to relate to.”

And-- oh yeah, that’s right, she’d mentioned a therapist earlier, too. His hand stills and he looks up at her.

“Wait-- Dr. Bright?”

“Yup, that’s the one! Wow, small world. Same therapist. Same residence hall.” She’s still bouncing. He smiles.

“Yeah, speaking of which, the-- the whole, needing notes from your roommate thing, that was. A complete lie. I just-- felt something that felt really kind of awful and it scared me so I went looking for it and then realized I couldn’t really say why exactly I was here. So.”

“Hm, yeah, that’ll do it. I freak out every time the lights go wonky while I’m working cause I think my roommate will figure it out. And then the lights go even wonkier because I’m freaking out and then the power goes out and I think everyone kind of hates me at this point but like, not me specifically, because they don’t know I’m doing it. Uh. Sorry. About that. By the way. Also sorry about my emotions being awful.”

He winces. Okay, maybe he could’ve been more tactful talking about her emotions. Then again he could be more tactful about a  _ lot  _ of things, so is it really that surprising? And, yeah, he’s guilty of being pissed about the shitty electricity in this building too, but. He’s not gonna say that. She feels guilty enough on her own right now.

There’s a bit of that sludge creeping back in.

“But, yeah, what you were feeling earlier was just-- I dunno. I kinda get like this at the end of the day. I spiral? Really easily? Apparently that’s an ADHD thing, just having like, these really big emotions and focusing too much on something that happened earlier so you end up just spiraling between emotions and the bad thing. Or, I dunno, something Dr. Bright probably would have explained waaaay better than me. And like, earlier today I had multiple professors tell me that I was getting close to failing my classes, because I haven’t really been turning things in, and I  _ have  _ to get this stuff done, because I’m completely, totally out of time to procrastinate.”

“...But you can’t focus,” Caleb finishes for her when she trails off.

“Yeah. Yeah, and then it’s like, I know it’s not good, but it’s really, really easy to fall down that spiral. Like, like I’m a failure, or terrible, or I shouldn’t be trying, and my professors are putting in far more effort to help me than they should be, and I don’t deserve any of that attention because like no matter what I do I’m gonna suck because my brain sucks and they should put their energy into the students who are actually getting the work done and who are actually gonna get somewhere, and so maybe if I just wasn’t.” She pauses, takes a breath. Her voice is smaller when she speaks again. “Maybe if I wasn’t here anymore it’d be okay. And I wouldn’t be wasting their time. Or mine. Because there’d be no more me.”

She’s not bouncing now. She shrugs like it’s all very casual and doesn’t matter to her, but she’s actually kind of shrunk into herself a bit.

The lights are flickering.

The black sludge is back completely now.

“I mean. I wasn’t gonna do anything, though.”

There’s no lie, there, but Caleb can feel the half-truth. She wasn’t actually convinced of that.

Caleb takes a breath. This is what he’s here for.

He’s still learning, he’s still got a lot to learn, but-- well. Dr. Bright isn’t here. Maybe he can try to help.

“That’s not true though. I mean, like, just because you struggle a little more doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it. Or that you’re not worth other people’s effort to help you. They probably just… want you to be the best you can be and they’re focused on you because they recognize that you might need that tiny extra push.”

Something pokes up through the sludge. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. And like. I dunno, I think what you’re doing is pretty cool? You said clean energy, right?”

She perks up a bit. “Oh, yeah, I’m trying to use my ability to help create this whole system that might be the most powerful form of clean energy we have. It’d probably be pretty cheap, too? I’m workshopping it, but I’m optimistic.”

“Yeah, see? That’s it. You’re working on something good. It’ll help people. And the planet. That’s not terrible. That’s like… really good, actually. And important. And you’ve gotta be here to do that.”

“...Yeah. I guess.” She’s quiet for a bit, the longest she’s been silent since they started talking, then nods once, firmly. “Yeah. Heh, you kinda sound like her. Dr. Bright, I mean.”

His legs are out in front of him, and fully extended, his feet press against the opposite bed, coming to rest right next to her. He nudges her side with his leg.

“I mean it. It’s important. You’re important.”

She looks like she’s about to say something-- thank him or something, maybe, he feels the gratitude swell up a bit-- but then clearly, something completely different crosses her mind because she jumps up a bit and slaps her thighs enthusiastically a couple times. “Oh!! Oh, you’re using your ability to help your career too, aren’t you? You’re an empath here for psych or something. Right?  _ Right?” _

Jesus, these emotional shifts are starting to give him whiplash. They aren’t entirely bad, just. A lot. Unexpected. Kinda startling. Not really something he’s used to. “Uh. Yeah, you're spot-on. Studying to be a therapist.”

“Oh, man, I knew it! Oh, that’s super cool--”

She ends up rambling at him about her own project and her ability and he realizes that the bouncing and thigh-slapping thing is kind of a common thing for her, when she gets really excited about something. She talks at him for an hour, until they hear the doorknob turn and her roommate walks back in and Caleb realizes it’s, like, almost midnight.

“Ah, shit, I should get going,” he says, and yikes, he feels stiff when he stands up. Is this aging? Is he getting old? He’s only eighteen, this shouldn’t happen.

Then again, he has been sitting in the same position for nearly two hours. That’d do it.

He says his goodbyes, but it’s pretty clear they’re both not done talking to each other, and thinks maybe, maybe he’s made a friend.

Caleb notices, when all is said and done, that the black sludge has gone down. It’s not choking or suffocating anymore. Not gone, not entirely, just. Not terrible. Not all-consuming. Not world-ending.

Just.

There.

Background noise, if even that.

It’s better. It’s damped down.

He checks his phone when he gets back to his room-- a string of missed calls from Alice, a couple Instagram notifications, and Alice’s two texts in response to his text earlier. “Ooh, I see. Superhero duties are calling,” then, “well, good luck, i’m going to bed.”

Huh.

Superhero duties.

He thinks about it for a bit.

So-- yeah. His ability sucks sometimes, and he’s still exhausted as fuck, and he has a really terrible stress headache that won’t go away no matter  _ what  _ he does, and he’s spent the last few days wanting to rip his ability out through his chest and throw it in the Boston harbor as hard as he can, but--

But he helped.

And this is what he’s  _ here  _ for.

So maybe it’s all worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'a new mission' by josh whitehouse
> 
> man i just want all the bonus ep characters to be friends and for caleb to have atypical friends his own age is that so much to ask for
> 
> atypical gang is great don't get me wrong but Let Him Meet Lou And Rory And Maybe Austin Too
> 
> this started with the idea of Caleb calling Alice during finals week and turned into something that actually has a plot, almost. wack


End file.
